Records Flap Delays Trial Over Jail

A federal judge has postponed a trial between the Southern Poverty Law Center and Polk County Sheriff's Office after a dispute between lawyers over the release of 10,000 pages of records and 30 DVDs.

By MATTHEW PLEASANTTHE LEDGER

LAKELAND | A federal judge has postponed a trial between the Southern Poverty Law Center and Polk County Sheriff's Office after a dispute between lawyers over the release of 10,000 pages of records and 30 DVDs.

U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday ordered on Wednesday that the trial start no earlier than June 10, pushing back the start date at least a week.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights organization, filed a motion May 17 arguing the Sheriff's Office belatedly produced an "extraordinarily voluminous" amount of important internal records it requested, making a postponement necessary so it could analyze the documents.

Sheriff's Office lawyers responded Tuesday by arguing the issue could have been raised sooner and the nonprofit had unpaid bills for copying costs, leading them to require pre-payment or the use of a third-party copying service.

Southern Poverty Law Center lawyer Tania Galloni said Thursday the Sheriff's Office hadn't notified the nonprofit of an outstanding bill, and she has since requested an invoice.

The nonprofit asked the judge to move the trial to July, but Galloni welcomed any extra time that will give lawyers an opportunity to read through the material.

"We just want the process to be fair," Galloni said. "And we think fairness means giving us enough time to look at the records."

Sheriff Grady Judd said the filings were part of the usual jousting among lawyers in the lead up to trial.

"It's obvious the judge was not swayed by their frivolous pretrial motion because he didn't back the trial up like they wanted," he said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center filed suit against the Sheriff's Office last year on behalf of seven juveniles.

The suit alleges various abuses and problems at the Polk County Jail, where the law enforcement agency houses young offenders.

As the lawsuit has approached trial, the sheriff has repeatedly defended the agency's treatment of children.

The motions filed by lawyers on both sides this week show the tension between the parties heading into trial.

Southern Poverty Law Center lawyers wrote that the Sheriff's Office lawyers improperly withheld the documents, which they consider crucial to their case.

A federal magistrate judge ordered the records produced by May 15.

But the motion argues the Sheriff's Office lawyers waited until the deadline to tell the nonprofit they planned to send the records to a copying service.

The nonprofit says it learned through the copying service that the records wouldn't be available until May 20 -- a day before the deadline for the lawyers to finalize their exhibits.

The nonprofit argued its case relies on documents related to Sheriff's Office practices and patterns over time.

The documents they sought included disciplinary actions taken against deputies, use of force reports, investigations into uses of force against children and videos of use of force, including pepper spraying.

Lawyers for the Sheriff's Office called the request to postpone the trial "disingenuous" and said that the nonprofit "feigns surprise at the use of a third party to copy the documents."

They argue the latest documents produced equaled the size of previous requests, and the nonprofit should have expected that.

"There are no 'smoking gun' documents here," their response says, "just more of the same that has been produced in mass quantities over the last year."

[ Matthew Pleasant can be reached at matthew.pleasant@theledger.com or 863-802- 7590. ]